Anti-War 'Lefties' Fail To Live Up To Soldier-Hating Cliches

Tim Blair Forced To Trawl Blog Comments To Nail 'Peaceniks'

You can easily detect the tollings of disappointment in Tim Blair's post on reactions to the death of Australian soldier, David Pearce.

No doubt Blair was all geared up to do a nice big fat post for his fans highlighting all those 'Evil 'Lefty' bloggers and columnists who saw fit to use the tragedy of Pearce's death in Afghanistan to spew anti-Howard and anti-soldier hatred.

But even though he left it almost a full day, Blair was unable to find even one Australian 'lefty' blogger who was ragging on the troops, or spilling anti-war rhetoric, to quote from in his long post.

Not one.

So what did Blair do?

He was forced to trawl through hundreds of comments from an online media site, so he could scrape together a measly 14 or so comments that fitted his pre-planned post, which he then titled :

Leftist Peacenik Sampler

But Blair couldn't go to grim 'Lefty' media hangouts like The Sydney Morning Herald or the Melbourne Age, to round up the 14 or so comments he knew would set his mostly right-wing American readers aflaming. He was forced to find them on the main portal site, news.com.au, for the tabloid newspaper he works for, The Daily Telegraph.

And how did Blair know those 14 or so News Limited media reading commenters were 'Leftist Peaceniks'?

Since when did Murdoch's media demand to know political affiliation for people wanting to comment on news stories on Murdoch media sites?

Since never.

But Blair knew he had to deliver a big fat post on his blog full of examples of vile Australian 'Lefty' soldier hate for his readers, or they'd be so disappointed. Not only disappointed, but they might start believing the very obvious truth that the vast majority of all Australians, whether they vote for John Howard or not, hold absolutely no animosity at all for soldiers who have gone to war, mostly because so many Australian families have long histories marked and punctuated by the tragedy of traumatised war veterans who were unable to explain what had happened to them.

Trawling comments and then quoting them is a standard tactic of Blair's American right-wing blogging and conservative media allies. Read through enough comments and you will be guaranteed to find people spilling the kind of bile you can use to make whatever pathetic point you want. And it's so much more dramatic, and downright grim, when you use this technique for blog posts on the deaths of soldiers, less than 24 hours after the tragedy has occurred.

You're a sad man, Blair, and you're trying to create an atmosphere of division and hate that doesn't actually exist in any large or even noticeable way in our society, outside of the media. Outside of blogs like your own.

But if your intention is to waste your excellent writing talents on becoming the next Piers Akerman or Andrew Bolt, then congratulations are due : you've just proved you're already there.